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Boarding Schools

In 1860, Whipple incorporated the Bishop Seabury Mission in Faribault. With the help of gifts from wealthy eastern donors, the mission developed into three schools: Seabury Divinity School, Shattuck School for boys, and St. Mary's Hall for the education girls. Over the next 40 years the schools would become dedicated to boarding and educating American Indian children.

"It is impossible to separate the history of Indian education from the land policies that dominated U.S. relations with tribal nations. Boarding schools and mission schools were designed to separate American Indian children from their families, communities and their "Indianness," while encouraging children to adopt the Christian values and lifeways of the dominant culture. In exchange for citizenship and Christianity, Indian people would allot their communal property on reservations, which opened the door to alienation from land. Beneath the rhetoric of good intentions was a dangerous policy that ultimately dispossessed tribal nations of a significant portion of their land base. Minnesota is often used in history books as an example of a state where both politicians and the citizenry went to great lengths to dispossess Indians."

-Brenda Child, Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Associate Professor of American Studies and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota